Thursday, October 7, 2010

my big excuse

Last night was another of those go-to-a-concert-and-get-only-an-hour-of-sleep-before-I-have-to-wake-up nights.

So please excuse my lack of posting yesterday. I know there were more than a few people who were looking forward to the next installment of my this writer's life comics. Well, I have more on the way... but I got too busy and eye-blurred yesterday.

I was reading through an edited version of next year's offering: Stick, which, I have to say, is a beautiful book. And not like me at all in its... er... optimism?

Actually, the book was made more beautiful through the guidance of my editor. Last week, my friend Brian James wrote a post on his blog about the importance of the editor's contribution to fiction, so I can't really add to what he expressed. But, let me tell you... it makes all the difference -- having a real editor who is not so much concerned about merely printing legible pages of paper as opposed to extracting the best possible work out of a writer.

I don't know... probably the only people in the world who really understand the true value and contribution of editors are editors themselves or writers. In any event, editors are generally unsung heroes in my estimation.

So I was caught up reading.

Which reminds me, too... I got caught up reading an Advance Copy of a novel that is going to be released by Candlewick Press (a publishing house I am not associated with) next year. I was contacted by the editor and a literary agent to see if I'd be interested in potentially writing a blurb for this book.

And, I'm, like, me?

I thought, what a cool thing to be asked. So, anyway... I'm not going to say anything about the book, or its title and author. But, I really really like it a lot.

And I'm nearly finished reading it, so I will send my blurb in to Candlewick when I close the book on the book, and I'll even talk about it here, too.

Cool story.

Dark.

How I like 'em.

One other thing, and then I'll start drooling from lack of sleep: I never listen to music when I write. When I write, I need absolute quiet. Just the sounds of nature. No TV on downstairs, no talking in the house, just the sound of the wind outside and the animals, maybe one of the neighbors chopping up corpses... I don't know... (there are no traffic noises where I live).

However... I did listen to a lot of one particular artist when I wrote Stick last winter. You know who? Neil Young. Lots of Neil Young. There's even a quoted line from a Neil Young song in the novel.

I don't know why, but for some reason, I've really been dwelling on that line lately.